Monday, July 25, 2011

Borderlands: Table of Contents

I have been blathering a good deal lately about this piece or that piece that will be coming out with the Hill Cantons: Borderlands sourcebookas of late, but realized I haven't done a general overview of where the draft version was at in a good, long while.

The recent spate of writing has me feeling a little cocksure about having the draft out by my first deadline (ominously I picked the same day that the United States may become a junk-bond trader of a country). Barring that by the end of the first week. A lot of the pieces have clicked into place and I now have at least some writing in every planned section which is a fine feeling.

Keeping with the open game design process we've been running with for the past seven months, I'm slapping up the draft table of contents as a PDF download here.

Note the sub-headers and section orders are highly likely to change--and you may see an addition or two in there--but overall this bad boy is heading down to the finish line.

Feel free to ask any questions if anything looks particularly tantalizing or mystifying.

I may have missed this in an earlier post, but I found it odd that there was no mention of Greg Stolze's "Reign" in the chapter on domain-level play in other RPGs (I guess it would be considered 4th wave?).

Looking good. I'm really looking forward to your run-down on domain level play. I also notice Aria is missing from the list, but then, it's not as though you can mention every single domain style-game that was ever released, let-alone a little known project like Aria.

Everything you write about this game gets me more and more eager to see the finished version. So much so that I've expanded my concept of the Expeditionary Isle of the Earthshaker campaign to facilitate domain play if the PC's are interested.

@DesertMost definitely thank you very much. Having been an editor by trade, I know and appreciate the fact that a writer, no matter how skilled, needs fresh eyes.

I was thinking that I would recruit at least three volunteer editors, so that we could swing through three or more cycles.

@JeremyThe list wasn't meant to be complete, in fact it's a section that is getting slimmed down by the day (too much talky talk meta-analysis). I just wanted to present a context for the project and why it evolved in the ways that it did.

Reign and the domain rules for Green Ronin's Song of Ice and Fire are solid examples of the new school approach, and quite good on their own terms. But they are highly divergent from the approach Borderlands and ACKS have taken (the classic play, granular route).

@BrianI would be very eager to hear what your actual experience is playing with that level of play. Doubly so since I have been following with interest the campaign kick-off.

So looking forward to the release of this. Adding the resource gathering, politics and nation building mechanics popular in PC games like Civilization has long been an interest of mine, and I'll be happy to review the final product over on my site once you're done.